Many varieties of automatic vending devices are in common, everyday use. These include not only machines for vending snack foods, soft drinks, or other food items, but also machines that vend services, such as vending photocopiers, pay telephones and laundry machines.
Varieties of merchandise dispensing devices have been developed for many different types of products. Most typically such assemblies operate with uniformly packaged products. Depending upon the packaging, an attendant electro-mechanical assembly sequentially advances the product requested by a user. Refrigerated and heated products have also been maintained in enclosures having mechanical support units which dispense the product at a preferred temperature.
While vending machines have consistently provided a convenient means for obtaining a variety of products, most suffer from numerous drawbacks. For starters, most machines consist of individual units whose inventory must be checked manually every so often. This creates a significant labor cost in running vending machines as one or more people must travel to each vending machine location. Either a person checks the machine too many times to ensure it never depletes its inventory or the machine is not checked enough and the inventory runs short angering potential customers. The manual effort involved in keeping track of the vending machine's inventory also applies to ensuring the machine is operating correctly. In addition, the inventory data must then be manually collected and re-entered into an inventory tracking system if any automation is to be implemented, which also requires additional time and manpower.
The mechanical mechanisms for actually dispensing products from prior art vending machines has also fallen short as to the number of different products which can be dispensed. Typical vending machines employ a spiral guide device that rotates and pushes products to the front of the machine until they fall from a shelf to an opening in the bottom of the machine. Sometimes individual doors are used which require the customer to open and reach into the door to obtain the product. The prior art typically only allows movement of products in one direction or another, usually horizontally. The mechanisms found in the prior art tend to limit the products which can be made available through vending or dispensing machines.
Therefore, in light of the foregoing and other deficiencies in the prior art, the applicant's invention is herein presented.